Adelaide-based start-up Myriota was a feature at the Everything IoT event in Sydney on 17 October 2016, showing off their technology, a matchbox-sized device that provides two-way satellite-based communications for IoT applications.
Myriota was spun off from the University of South Australia in November 2015, with a $2 million investment from Canadian low earth orbit satellite operator ExactEarth. The company will use ExactEarth's polar orbiting satellites for part of its service.
Myriota is close to full commercial service. According to CEO Alex Grant, the technology can last for years on a battery, and it is also low-cost, small, and uses little power. This allows it to be used in low-cost microsatellites and with minimal spectrum resources.
The key is to build all the complexity into the ground stations, while simplifying the in-orbit devices as much as possible, by using a very simple communications waveform. The ground stations then do the heavy lifting of distinguishing between the transmissions received from thousands of devices in the field.
According to Grant, Myriota will be offering a low-cost entry level service priced at a few dollars a month, with costs ramping up depending on the number of messages to be communicated. He expects to take on some customers who may have thousands of sensors.
The company can either offer one-way services, where the device transmits a few hundred bytes of data whenever a satellite comes into a range. A two-way service would allow data exchange in real time whenever a satellite passes overhead.
Myriota claims the service will be well-suited for industrial control applications, where operators want to read a parameter from equipment in remote areas that cellular networks do not have coverage in, then use that reading to trigger some other action.
However, the company hopes its cost-competitive service and the freedom from the need for any terrestrial structure, as well as a simple system that works anywhere will see its market expand beyond remote areas. The company will initially focus on Australia, but is already seeing interest from other countries.